


Akkeri

by Punny_Puck



Series: Daemon 'Verse [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Daemons, Gen, References to Torture, Warning: Animal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punny_Puck/pseuds/Punny_Puck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing that most unsettles Steve about Loki (and later Thor) is their lack of daemons.  Except Loki does have a daemon.  She just isn't with him.</p>
<p>Alternate Universe where Humans and Jotun have daemons and Aesir and Chitauri do not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Akkeri

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Mentions of torture, some violence, and the aftermath of animal abuse. Nothing too gory, but just to be safe.

Waking in the twenty-first century is not so difficult.  One moment Steve is promising Peggy the Stork Club and the next he’s waking in a counterfeit hospital room in Manhattan.  No, the waking up is the easy part. 

 

Steve thinks that if he didn’t have [Akkeri](http://dogs.about.com/od/fordoglovers/ig/Mixed-Breeds/Molly-the-Mangler.htm), his one link to home, he would give up within the first week.  He’s never felt so alone in his life; not when he was a scrawny kid from Brooklyn, not when he was a dancing monkey selling bonds, not even after Bucky died, though it came close. 

He thinks maybe if everything weren’t so familiar and so utterly distant at the same time, it would be easier.  He can see the remnants of his past life here and there.  New York is still New York even if the packaging has changed.  He and Akkeri walk through the streets that are almost his, in the city that was once his home, and he cannot find anything to latch onto.

 

Fury, at least, distracts him.  First with punching bags and briefings, then with the Avengers.  He feels guilty being glad when they’re finally called in.  People have died, and that is never something to be glad of.  But he finally knows how to act in the helicarrier.  He didn’t much like being a soldier, but at least he knows how to act like one.

 

He suits up and fights the bad guys and he finally knows exactly what he should be doing. 

 

The thing that most unsettles Steve about Loki (and later Thor) is their lack of daemons.  He can see the others are a bit unnerved as well when Bruce’s cat nuzzles his collar bone and even Tony’s vixen licks his hand where she thinks no one can see.  He watches as Loki stands in the glass cell (alone, always alone) and cannot help but stare at the man.  It isn’t natural and it makes him sink his hand into Akkeri’s golden fur and hold on just a bit too tight.  Akkeri doesn’t mind though, she just leans more weight into him as they watch the lone man. 

“He looks sick,” Akkeri says quietly as they watch the monitor. She’s right.  He’s pale and starved looking with dark circles under his eyes and a cast to his posture that suggests he’s only on two feet because he’s too stubborn to fall.  Steve had noticed, but attributed it to the lack of a daemon. 

“What do you think it means?” He asks her.  She nuzzles his hand with her wet nose. 

“Nothing good.”

 

Thor explains the Aesir do not have daemons.  They are still whole; their souls are simply a part of them.  It sounds unbearably lonely to Steve, but Thor seems unbothered.  Happy, even.  It makes Steve and Akkeri shiver.

 

The battle comes and Steve forgets the lone man for a time.

***

Loki is left alone in the pent-house by the green beast.  It is all he can do to summon the energy to teleport.  Now is the time to do it, while the Chitauri and the Other are focused on the attack.  He gathers the universe around him and steps onto the Chitauri ship.

He knows where they put her.  They showed him many times when he was feeling reluctant to obey.  He is there in an instant.  Another minute and the guards are on the floor with knifes jutting from their necks.  The cage is in the center of the room, and Loki can barely keep himself together to pick the lock (she’s so close) but he manages and she’s there and they’re teleporting before anyone can see him again. 

He’s back on the pent-house, back in the hollow made by his body.  And it’s alright, because they’re finally together.  He reaches out a hand and rests it on her paw and gives himself up to exhaustion. 

***

Steve really doesn’t know what to think when they find Loki in the pent-house with the daemon he apparently doesn’t possess.  He looks around at the other Avengers and only Hawkeye doesn’t look surprised.

The panther is so thin she looks skeletal.  Her body seems to curl in on itself and Steve wonders how she could possibly walk with limbs so brittle-looking.  One ear is torn and nearly missing.  Her back is crisscrossed by shiny scars and fur that could have been originally black seems to have faded to a greyish color. 

Steve has never seen a daemon so damaged.  He knew it was possible, of course.  Daemons often had scars reflecting the scars of their humans.  Fury’s one-eyed vulture, for example.  But this was a scale he’d only seen rivaled by the worst of the experiments Schmidt and Himmler tried on prisoners. 

Their arrival seems to have woken Loki.  He stirs in his hollow and doesn’t seem to register the enemies above him.  He only has eyes for the daemon. He reaches out a thin and shaking hand to brush the daemon softly, carefully.  She still wakes with a shudder.  For a second, man and daemon only regard each other silently, then she is frantically wriggling closer and he’s digging his fingers into her fur so hard it must hurt, but neither man nor daemon seem to notice. 

The daemon takes arm in a soft mouth and holds it.  “Never again, Loki, you promise me,” she murmurs so softly Steve can barely hear. 

Loki just nods into her fur, wiping his tears away in the process. 

 

The Avengers take him to the Helicarrier again.  This time, he’s put into the Med-bay, and they examine the scars and wounds the illusions had covered before.  It is a difficult endeavor considering neither man nor daemon will settle for less than full-body contact between them. 

 

Steve is asked to question him.  Why him, he is not sure, but he agrees.  Thor is not happy; he wants to take Loki home immediately and without questions, but Fury talks him into at least a rudimentary interrogation.  When they asked about the daemon, Thor had laughed.

“It is only a pet, my friends!  A silly magical experiment to make it talk!”

Steve shivers when he goes on to mention the pranks they played on Loki and the daemon, how they would touch her, pull her ears or tail so she would snarl and shout at them. 

Akkeri leans hard against Steve until Thor leaves the room.

 

When Steve enters the tiny interrogation room, Loki is sitting stiffly in the hard plastic chair.  His daemon is curled up beneath a too-big sweatshirt with just her nose visible at the neck. Steve thinks this shouldn’t be possible, panthers are much too large animals to fit under a sweatshirt, and he wonders if she was always small or if it is due to some interference from the Chitauri. Steve cannot tell which one is trembling, but the chair is shaking and Loki’s knuckles are white where he’s holding her too tightly.

“We won’t take her,” he says, because he cannot even threaten that.  They are still shaking, but the panther—he still doesn’t know her name—licks Loki’s cheek and whispers loud enough for Steve to hear.  “Center, Loki.”

The man takes a deep breath and nods at her, but Steve sees his hands clench spasmodically around the daemon. 

Steve wants to ask her name, to ask how Loki can have a daemon when his brother lacks one, but he also knows anymore mention of the daemon will only make Loki more defensive than he already is.  So Steve ignores her and begins to ask the questions Fury drilled into his head. 

“Your name is Loki Odinson?”

Loki nods, then shakes his head.  “I suppose properly it should be Loki Laufeyson.”

Steve nods and makes a note in the file.  “Thor mentioned you were adopted.”

Loki twitches at that and the panther makes a sound that could either be a threatening growl or a comforting purr. 

Steve moves on.  “You sent the robot known as the Destroyer to Puente Antiguo?”

Loki nods. 

“What happened after that?”

They have the information from Thor, but Thor doesn’t seem nearly as trustworthy as he had at the beginning of the week. 

Loki shrugs.  “I returned ho—to Asgard, coaxed Thor into fighting me, tried to destroy a planet, did destroy the bifrost and endeavored to kill myself.”

He says it in such a flat voice Steve might have thought him unaffected, but he notices the way the daemon curls closer to Loki, comforting.

Steve nods, and again makes a note in the file. “And then?”

“I fell into the abyss and was found by the Chitauri.”

“And you worked for them.” 

Loki nods. 

Akkeri, who has been sitting quietly beside his chair, asks, “The Chitauri do not have daemons, do they?”

It is the panther who responds.  “No.  There are only a few species in cosmos that do.  Humans are one of them,” she pauses and looks up at Loki.  “Jotun are another.”

Steve wants to ask what Jotun are, and why the mere mention of them makes Loki look like he wants throw up, but Akkeri goes on.  “They did this to you.”

It is not a question, but the panther moves her head enough that it emerges from the neck of the sweatshirt.  She nods and sends her man another glance, this one approving.  “We are very stubborn.”

 

Steve isn’t sure how he makes it through the rest of the interrogation.  Loki recounts (still in that flat, even voice) how the Chitauri motivated him.  When his voice fades to a whisper, the daemon (he learns her name is Sálvisa) takes over.  He fills up a legal pad with notes in an effort to distance himself from the story, but still finds his left hand buried in Akkeri’s fur. 

 

He thanks Loki when they’re finished and walks calmly to the bathroom to vomit in the sink.  Tony leans against the mirror and watches.  His usually amused eyes are dark, and his vixen daemon is sitting on his shoulder with her tail wrapped around his throat.  He stands there for a few moments while Steve rinses his mouth out with water. 

“You believe him?”

“Don’t you?”

Tony is hugging himself without seeming to know he is.  He looks at Steve out of the corner of his eyes. 

“No, I do.  You can’t fake that shi-stuff.  The thing I don’t know so much about is what it means for his future.”

Steve frowns and wipes his face with a paper towel. “What do you mean?”

Tony shifts and gives Steve a look that he is beginning to identify as a _are you really not seeing what I’m seeing_ look. 

Tony sighs and pushes away from the wall. “Okay, so he was tortured.  He was coerced into taking over the world.  What do you think that says to Fury?  Absolutely nothing. You think it’s going to stop him from punishing Loki regardless?  He’s going to toss him back to Asgard without a second glance and not give a fuck if they don’t know Loki wasn’t wholly at fault.”

Steve’s initial thought is that of denial.  He knows that sometimes the White Hats aren’t much better than the Black Hats, but surely they wouldn’t send someone who had been forced into this action to face a punishment.  But then he remembers the weapons and Phase Two. 

Tony is looking at Steve with a stubborn tilt to his jaw and his arms crossed over his chest and Steve suddenly realizes that the other man is waiting for him to defend Fury.  To announce that he will follow Fury’s orders regardless of the loss of life.  Regardless of what is right. 

He realizes that Tony is asking him if he is going to do anything about it, or if Tony will have to try alone. 

Tony has only seen the soldier that Steve has become, not the skinny weakling who still smarted off to bullies. 

He gives a smile he hasn’t smiled since he woke up in a new century and says, “We’ll just have to see about that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Akkeri is an old Norse word meaning “anchor.” She is a dog of mixed breeds, because Steve has always been a man of mixed signals. She’s got some Collie, German Shepherd and Labrador retriever, three of the most loyal breeds of dogs.
> 
> If you're wondering what Sálvisa's condition is like in this fic, look up Patrick the Pit Bull and try not to cry all over yourself.


End file.
